


Drawing Flies

by Lunatik_Pandora



Series: A Different Orbit [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Arthur Weasley is Not A Man to Cross, Destroying the Dursleys, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Revenge, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23121184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunatik_Pandora/pseuds/Lunatik_Pandora
Summary: What if Petunia hadn't agreed to sign her rights away?A companion piece to Chapter 8 of "No Code".
Relationships: Petunia Evans Dursley/Vernon Dursley
Series: A Different Orbit [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632550
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	Drawing Flies

**Author's Note:**

> I would STRONGLY recommend reading Chapter 8 of my main fic No Code for context here. (Yes, you can just jump in at chapter 8 and be fine; it's non-linear. And chronologically, that's the "earliest" chapter.)
> 
> I was chatting with a friend about what Arthur would have done to the Dursleys if Petunia had called his bluff. Arthur doesn't mess around when it comes to his kids. And well... Harry might technically be Sirius and Remus', but he belongs to the Weasleys too, you know? Arthur takes care of his own, and he's in a unique position to be able to get away with it.
> 
> Title borrowed from Soundgarden's song of the same name (and if the music isn't your cup of tea, at least check out the lyrics... for tone.)

What if Petunia hadn’t agreed to sign? Would Arthur have made good on his promise to destroy them?

In a word, yes.

The four of them would not have stayed for an hour, watching the kitchen furniture beat the Dursleys around their heads. They would have left almost immediately. Remus and Sirius would still have given Dudley their contact information, but maybe stressed a little harder that really, if he needed a place to stay, their home was open to him.

It would start out small. Little, minor inconveniences. Problems with the car that no mechanic would be able to find -- it would always work perfectly when Vernon took it in, but he would find himself more often than not unable to start the thing in the mornings, or he would wind up locking his keys inside, even though he could have sworn they were just in his hand.

The house, too, would start to have trouble. Leaking pipes, a television that never seemed to bring in a clear picture, a refrigerator that stopped working one day without warning. Just enough to cause some stress, but never enough to be entirely ruinous, so they would think little of it.

Vernon would start making mistakes at work. Little ones, just intermittently, nothing terribly alarming. Just accidentally inverting two numbers in a code. Usually, it would be caught, he would be given a talking to, and he would promise to be more careful. Until one day, it wouldn’t be caught, and the mistyped code would translate to an improperly sized item that would cause an accident on a work site. It wouldn’t cause any serious injury, thankfully, but it could have, and that would spell trouble for Grunnings. The mistake would be traced back to Vernon, and he would be brought into a meeting. They would only want to move him to another department, as clearly the stress of sales was getting to him. He is a long-time employee who had made a lot of money for the company in the twenty years he had worked there, and they would be willing to simply dock his pay for dragging them into a lawsuit. And if Vernon was anyone else, he might at the very least accept the compromise (the alternative being that he would be sacked.) However, Vernon Dursley is incapable of holding his tongue. He would fight back. He would lose, and be escorted out of the building that same day with all his belongings in a box and not so much as a severance package, his company car seized.

They would have several months of savings to live on, which should be enough to get them by, if they tighten their belts a bit while Vernon looks for another job. But despite interview after interview, he never seems to get the offer. “While your qualifications were impressive, we ultimately decided on another candidate.” Over and over and over again, rejection after rejection. 

The holidays would come and go without any word from Dudley. Not having to explain to him just yet would be a relief; surely by the time he comes home for the summer, Vernon will have found a job, and it will be a moot point. They can just explain it away as him being dissatisfied with how he was being passed over by management; everything would be fine. But as weeks go by, Vernon slowly stops getting calls for interviews at all. He would cast his net wider and wider, noting that he was willing to relocate if need be; still nothing. He would lower his salary requirements; still nothing. He would start looking even at retail management, but no store would seem to want to hire him. In the spring, their savings would be starting to run thin. Petunia would finally break down and get a job at a grocery store as a cashier, just to keep their heads above water. Vernon, feeling defeated, would bury himself in bottles of brandy while she is at work. By the time Dudley would be due to come home, the bills would be piled so high that Petunia can’t see any way out of them, and Vernon would often be too drunk to care.

But Dudley wouldn't come home that summer. Petunia would phone the school, asking after him, and would be told that he had gone home with Piers. She would of course call Mrs. Polkiss, who would tell her they’d dropped him off at a friend’s out in the Cotswolds, that he was going to be camping with them for a bit, and oh, had Vernon found work yet? The ladies at the Bridge club missed her so dearly. She would tell herself it was better this way. Vernon would find work while Dudley was away, and everything would go back to normal by the time he came home.

But Vernon wouldn't be looking anymore, and the bills would begin coming in with past-due notices, and their savings would be all blown (she could have _sworn_ they had enough to last through the fall at least, where had it all gone?) Their once-beautiful lawn would be horrifically overgrown; the neighbors would be starting to complain. Petunia wouldn’t have time to care for it, as she would have taken up a second job at a cafe to make ends meet as best she could. She would know it was only a matter of time before they were foreclosed on.

She would start looking for apartments closer to work, and find one. It wouldn’t be the cheapest two-bedroom flat she could find, and she can barely afford it, but surely when Dudley comes home, he would be wanting a place to sleep. She would be certain that when he came home, Vernon would turn himself around and start trying a little harder. But as she goes into Dudley’s room to go pack his things, she would find it stripped bare, and a short note left on the bed in her son’s handwriting.

_Came to say goodbye, but you were out and Dad was asleep. Sorry._

He had come home, and she had missed it, and Vernon would have been too out of it to notice. There would be no number to call, no new address, no explanation. Just _Sorry._

That night would be the worst fight she and Vernon had ever been in, until that point. It would also be the first time he’d ever laid a hand on her, but she would simply cover it up and head to work anyway. _He just let his temper get away from him. He didn’t mean it._

They would be settled into the new flat by Christmas, and she would spend it alone, eating leftover takeaway while listening to Vernon snore drunkenly from the second bedroom. She would have come home with clothes from the second-hand store for the first time, needing new trousers at a bare minimum --her old ones would have gotten uncomfortably tight due to their newly poor diet-- and he would have gotten upset about her spending their money when she should have been watching what she was eating. She would be sporting another bruise, this time on her arm. Somehow the insults would hurt more.

They would settle into a different routine: she would work all day and late into the evening, coming home only to sleep for a few hours before she would begin it all over again. He would spend his day drinking, bitterly lamenting his lost fortunes, and blaming her for all of it. A deep resentment would grow between them, sinking deeper than any bruise he would leave, burning in their bellies like the contents of the bottles he emptied.

Weeks would stretch into months, into years. Dudley never would call.

One day she would come home to a darkened flat. Vernon would be gone, to where she could only guess. He wouldn't be there the next day either, or the next. After a week, she would realize he'd actually left. She would sob on the floor, whether out of loss or anger or relief she wouldn't know.

She wouldn't renew the lease, instead moving to a smaller, single bedroom flat in London. It wouldn't have as many bugs as the last one, and she could afford it better. It also wouldn't be tainted with the memories of a life and love gone sour. But it would be lonely... deeply and painfully so.

One day, Petunia would be standing at her register at the grocery, ringing out a young woman's purchases. She would remind her a great deal of her late sister -- lovely long red hair, and a dark haired baby boy on her hip. She would wonder whatever became of the boy… the one she couldn't, wouldn't love. Was it worth it, in the end? She wouldn't think so.

She would hear a man address this young woman, apologizing for running off to take a call -- that Dudley would be running late. Petunia would look up at the familiar voice to see the boy she would have just been thinking of -- no, a man now -- kissing the cheek of the young woman she would realize with a dull pang was his wife; the child, his son. He would be going to meet with _her_ son. The couple would be chatting amicably, like she and Vernon had once done in their early days, before everything had gone wrong. He would bag the groceries for her, and she would laugh at his jokes, a full bodied beautiful laugh. _Lily used to laugh like that too, before she went and died and left me with you._ They would be so wrapped up in each other they would hardly notice her. He would pay for their groceries, telling his pretty wife he'd handle getting their purchases home, and could she please wait for him at the cafe, in case Dudley showed up. His wife would agree and leave, and he would turn back around to grab all the bags up, looking Petunia in the eyes as he thanked her with a small smile. Polite. She would see a tiny furrow appear between his brows, his lips twisting slightly as he would try and fail to place her face. She wouldn't be surprised he wouldn't recognize her. She could hardly recognize herself. She would plaster a false smile on and tell him to have a nice day. He would leave, looking back over his shoulder once, curious, and disappear into the crowd.

She would see his redheaded wife sitting at a table outside the cafe across the road. A tall, broad-shouldered man with blonde hair would approach her. Petunia's heart would leap into her throat as she laid eyes on her son for the first time in over eight years. There would be a customer calling her, but she couldn't tear herself away from the window. What would they matter to her when her boy was in front of her, almost close enough to touch? There would be a woman with him, a little brunette with a high, round little belly. The redheaded woman would stand, hugging both of them, and Petunia would realize she was also sporting one, albeit a little smaller, newer. She would watch as the two women checked in with each other, Dudley standing next to his wife proudly. The customer's calls behind her would begin getting more strident, but she would have just seen Harry jogging up with a wave; Dudley would throw an arm over his shoulders, rubbing his knuckles into the top of his head. Harry would elbow him in the stomach. She would see them both laughing as they shook hands properly before they sat down next to their pretty little pregnant wives, so picture perfect. She would feel a tap on her shoulder, and turn around; her manager would want to see her in his office.

Ten minutes later, she would have handed in her apron, and would walk out the door, trying to figure out if she could pick up more hours at the cafe -- the one her son would be taking lunch at. She would look over and see the redheaded woman watching her closely, a familiar grin spreading slowly across her face.

That grin… she would recognize it as the same grin as the man that had threatened her and Vernon the day they took the boy away. The man she used to see on the train platform with the irresponsible amount of children.

One of whom had been a girl with lovely long red hair.

_“You sign, or I will make it my personal mission to destroy your lives so completely and utterly that you will wish that these fine gentlemen behind me had killed you. At least that would have been quick and comparably painless.”_

Realization would flood her, gripping her heart in icy talons. Everything that she would have endured over the past near-decade would not have been a long stroke of bad luck and circumstance, as she would have told herself. It would have been a long, drawn out, calculated dismantling of her life, one which was eminently successful. Because of _him_.

 _No_ , she would realize. _I could have stopped this from happening. I could have just signed, but I was feeling petty and spiteful and I didn't want them to have another goddamn thing from me, even if it would work in my favor._

She would take a long, longing look at her son's back, hearing his deep, rich laugh, and that of his little wife, carrying the grandchild she would never know. Would it be a girl or a boy, she would wonder, as she turned to walk back home. Would it have its father's smile? His beautiful blonde curls? She wouldn't know if she deserved to know anymore. She would turn the key, and open the door to her dingy little flat, fully intending to sleep until her shift later that evening. She would flick on the light, and nearly jump out of her skin when she sees a man sitting at her table, sipping a cup of tea, watching her over horn-rimmed glasses. His red hair would be thinner and greyer than when she had last seen him, but she could never forget that face.

He would attempt to exchange pleasantries; she would rebuff him, suspicious of his motives. He would smile understandingly and hand her a slip of paper with an address written on it. He would tell her he was releasing her. Her nephew owned a little record shop down the way, he would explain, and he could leverage some contacts to get her back on her feet properly… provided she wasn't too proud to ask.

She would ask "why now" and he would simply shrug and say his daughter believed he had made his point. That the mother in her that would have seen Petunia's anguish at her separation from her son had warred against the mother in her that couldn't fathom starving and beating a child, and won… with caveats.

She would take the address from him, and he would leave her to her thoughts. It would never occur to her to ask after Vernon.

Would she swallow her pride and beg her once-hated nephew to see her son again? Or would she instead choose to live out the rest of her miserable life in bitter loneliness?

Ultimately, it wouldn't matter which she might have chosen. She would never have to.

She had signed.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I don't know if it's even possible for things to pan out like that in England, as I'm unsure how their social programs work (sorry!) This was basically just me doodling, with words, based on what I know (which is systems-- or lack thereof-- in the US.)
> 
> As for Arthur, he didn't need to do much. Most of what he did was just fiddle with some things around their house and get Vernon with a curse that makes him misspell things without realizing. (Think of Roonil Wazlib... but a bit more subtle than the twins.) The rest was literally just Petunia and Vernon self-destructing, and he just watched.
> 
> It's possible that going to such lengths may seem out of character for him, but let's consider:
> 
> He is a subtle man who manages to command the respect of his entire brood (minus Percy to an extent, but Percy is a ponce anyway) while also letting his wife do most of the front line work. But when he puts his foot down, even she listens. That says a lot. This is a man who speaks softly and carries a big stick.
> 
> He is highly intelligent, able to magically alter Muggle items as complicated as a car (similar to Sirius and his motorbike, which he was later responsible for repairing and upgrading in canon.) 
> 
> He works in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, which puts him in prime position to cover his tracks when he decides to skirt the law himself (as he has proven on multiple occasions he is willing to do when it suits him). 
> 
> He has an explosive temper (evidence: his fist in Lucius Malfoy's face; the time the twins got yelled at for trying to cast an Unbreakable Vow.)
> 
> He is also the son of Cedrella Black, and I think that fact gets conveniently ignored when we consider Arthur Weasley, and what kind of man he is.
> 
> Either way, most of my stuff is pretty Sirius/Remus centric, but I think that Arthur would want to get a swing in on the Dursleys in any way he could, especially since he's seen the conditions first hand. But that's just my opinion, man.
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
